Lapdogs
Cowardly and clueless, the U.S. media abandoned its post as Bush led the country into a disastrous war. A look inside one of the great journalistic collapses of our time.
By Eric Boehlert
05/05/07 “Salon” – – Thirteen days before he announced United States-led coalition forces had begun the war to “disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger,” President Bush on the evening of March 6, 2003, strolled into the East Room of the White House at 8:02 p.m. for a rare press conference – just his eighth since taking office. With war looming, the evening was clouded in a strange dynamic. Perhaps trying to shake off allegations of being a cowboy charging towards war, Bush appeared oddly sedate throughout the prime-time appearance, talking slowly and in a pronounced hush. His low-key approach was mirrored by the ninety-four equally somnambulant reporters assembled that night in the East Room who meekly walked through the motions with Bush.
If anxious viewers at home were hoping for some last-minute insight from Bush to help ease their doubts about the imminent war, why it had to be fought now, and why so many of the United States’ longtime allies around the world refused to support it, those viewers were likely disappointed as the president stuck to his well-worn talking points (“Saddam Hussein has had twelve years to disarm. He is deceiving people”). And for any viewers who held out hope that members of the assembled mainstream media (hereafter, “MSM”) would firmly, yet respectfully, press Bush for answers to tough questions about the pending invasion, they could have turned their TVs off at 8:05 p.m. </i>
Indeed.
